I’ve been scouring expat blogs out of China for news and images in the aftermath of the earthquake, but have found very little. So if you know of a civilian English-language blog with news coming out of Sichuan, China, please let me know.

Meanwhile, NPR’s China Diary blog is very informative, and includes photographs. A heart-wrenching excerpt: We are just leaving the horrific scene at the Juyuan Middle School outside the city of Dujiangyan. Hundreds of parents are still standing in the rain as the army works to find children trapped in the rubble. One parent told us she could hear her son calling.

Here’s a blog published by Time Magazine. Updates are infrequent and there are no photos, but there is some good information. From yesterday:

At least two chemical plants in the city of Shifang in Sichuan province have been destroyed in the quake. Hundreds are buried in the rubble at both sites. And —ominously?— from at least one of the plants liquid ammonia has been released into the atmosphere because of the destruction, according to Xinhua.net. The overall death toll, according to the Chinese government, is now at least 8600 and headed higher, possibly much higher. Remember that Chengdu, a provincial capital that not many foreigners have even heard of, has a population of 10.5 million. The population of New York, America’s largest city, is 8.2 million.

I’ve heard this quake compared to the 1906 earthquake of San Francisco, which was so devastating as to become a part not only of our local history here in the Bay Area, but of our national consciousness. Those of us who live here are inevitably reminded that a major earthquake is expected to strike in the Bay Area sometime within the next few decades, which makes the devastating photographs coming out of Sichuan even more chilling. There are also many thousands of Chinese Americans living in the Bay Area who still have family in China.